There's Just Me
by Robin the Crossover Junkie
Summary: Buffy's angsty thoughts in the future, after leaving the Dale. At least, in my mind, she leaves.


Title: There's Just Me  
Disclaimer: I don't own anything. And I don't own up to anything. I've stolen this particular character, and all the others mentioned, and they're chained in my bathtub because I don't have a storage closet to keep them in. Some of them are my sex slaves. Others, I just take shopping with me because they have EXCELLENT taste in clothing.   
Rating: PG, but there's mention of character death.  
Author's Note: I don't know where this came from. I know it sucks, but I just felt like writing it. So, sorry. Please give me feedback, because I like it. Even if you want to flame me. That works too. Thanks!  
  
  
  
Numbness is a funny thing. There are times when it's like a raging river, pulling you down and filling your lungs with icy, dirty water, drowning you slowly. There are times when you wish you were actually drowning. And there are times like these.  
  
I've been numb for a long time, but I'm getting by. Mostly, I just do my job, pay my bills, and watch the five channels my television antenna picks up. But sometimes I just need a break from the mundane life I lead, and I go for a walk in the night, like I used to. I don't find any vicious, scary things in the dark, not here. Here it's just deep woods along the sides of the little secondary highway, which passes right by the town I live in. Only I don't really live here. I've been staying here for a few months, collecting myself again. In a few more months, I'll move on, and no one will ask any questions. In a town like this, it's what you do. You go, you work for a few months at some crappy, low-paying job, before you move on. Nobody's been here long, except the really old people, but they understand what the young people come here for. Anonymity, quiet, and to forget.  
  
Everybody has something to forget. Sometimes the girls let you in on what they're forgetting, if they don't have anything really horrible to forget. I don't talk about it. Nobody would believe me anyway.  
  
I call myself Joy Rupert. It's not my name, but it'll do. Mostly, it's because even though I've come here to forget, I don't want to forget it all. I don't want to lose the life I had, because even through all the horrible things I've seen, I've done, I don't want to forget what made me happy. There were a lot of things in my old life that make me happy.  
  
I took my name from the people who were my parents. Joy for Joyce, and Rupert for Giles. He wasn't my biological father, of course, but that didn't make him any less of a dad. I considered calling myself Joy Rupert-Harrisburg, but I couldn't fit the signature on any of the job applications I turned in here. So I shortened it, and I just keep pictures of Xander and Willow in my wallet.  
  
The last time I ran off and changed my name, I was trying to escape the things I'd been forced to do. My friends never heard from me, and they never knew where I was. This time, I've been on the road for almost a year, and I'd send them post cards if I could. I write them all the time. What I've been doing, what I've been killing, where I've been working. I never send them, though. There's no place to send them to.  
  
I don't know how Giles is. I know he's alive, and in England, but when I tried to send him a letter, it came back with "Return to Sender" scrawled on the envelope, but not in Giles' tiny, efficient Watcher handwriting. I guess he moved, or something. Which is okay. Maybe one of these days, when I've gone through my own country, I'll start at his. I should be able to find Giles in England. I used to be good at finding Giles.  
  
Once in a while, I call Angel from a pay phone, wondering how he is. Just to let him know I'm okay. We aren't together, and we never will be, but it's nice to have a place that I could go home to when I'm tired of running.   
  
Not running. That's not what I'm doing. I'm just...going away. I needed to, after everything.  
  
How could I stay? I had lied to my friends for months, about so much. About Spike, about how I was...everything was so hard to sort out, that I just didn't. When Willow started to get bad again, I saw it, but I didn't really. I knew something was up, but I was starting to feel something for Spike that I shouldn't have felt.   
  
They all died. I don't want to talk about how, but it hurt me, because there was nothing I could do. I was trapped, and I'd fought badly, and Warren had...he must have gone crazy, or something, because he let some demons loose on them. I don't know why Willow didn't use her magic to stop them. Maybe she was afraid to use it after what had happened. Her, I can forgive. Myself, not so much.  
  
I found their bodies, and then I went after Warren. I killed him, and then I found Spike. Warren had done something to his chip. He was a computer genius, it couldn't have been too hard for him. He'd fixed Spike's chip so that every three minutes, it would go off, sending fires of shocks through his dead central nervous system, putting him into agony. But that wasn't all he'd done to the chip. Now, not only could Spike not hurt humans, but he couldn't drink blood. Any kind of blood.  
  
Have you ever seen a vampire who can't drink? The thing that gives him life, that heals him, and he can't touch it. Can hardly smell it without a warning shock from a tiny little piece of silicon stuck in his brain. With the constant shocks, and not being able to drink, he was wasting away, getting so weak and frail, that it made me sick to my stomach. He'd helped me to live, all those months I'd been lying to my friends, so I'd helped him to die. I had staked the vampire, the man, who had become my friend, my confidante, my lifeline. Then I left.  
  
I don't slay actively anymore. Well, I do, but I don't go hunting, or tracking, or patrolling. If I'm out, and I see demons, I kill them. Alone. Because I'm the Slayer. I'm always alone. There's just me.  
  
END 


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